Privacy policy
TopReferrals sets no advertising cookies and never sells reader data. We run our own first-party analytics, and Google Analytics, so we know which offers and guides help readers.
Cookies
We set first-party analytics cookies only: _wsv, a random visitor identifier kept for two years so we can recognise a returning browser (a copy is kept in your browser's local storage); _wss, a session marker that expires after 30 minutes without activity; and, if you opt out below, _wso, which remembers that choice. Our own team's browsers also carry _wsi, so our visits are left out of the figures. Google Analytics sets _ga and _ga_<id> (two years) to count visits and returning browsers.
What our analytics records
We record what readers do on the site: the pages viewed, time on page and how far down it was read, codes and links copied, clicks through to a brand, answers to “did this work?”, searches, questions opened, and page-speed measurements. With each of those we record the time, the referring website, search engine or AI assistant, your IP address and the network it belongs to, approximate location (city and country, derived from the IP address), browser, device, language and screen size, and the visitor identifier above.
We use this to understand which pages help readers, to tell people apart from automated traffic, and to match clicks against the brands' and networks' reports. It is stored on our own Cloudflare account and never sold. Records of readers' visits are kept for as long as they help us run the site; records of automated traffic are deleted after 90 days.
We also use Google Analytics, which records page views, how pages are used and the codes and links clicked, together with our visitor identifier, so the two sets of figures can be compared. Google processes that data on our behalf under its own terms and keeps it for 14 months; see how Google uses data from sites that use its services.
You can switch analytics off in this browser at any time, ours and Google's alike; after that neither records anything from it (only after a rare outage do we restore page visits from our hosting provider's request logs, which carry no cookies):
Outbound referral links
When you click through to a brand, you leave TopReferrals and the brand's own privacy policy applies. The referral attribution is handled by the brand, its affiliate network or Amazon, which may set its own cookie on its own site so the reward is credited. We never receive your personal details from them.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of the analytics records tied to your browser, or for their deletion, via the contact page. We hold no name, email or payment details unless you email us.
